There
are so many people at hand to teach the _parvenu_ how to furnish his
house, or how to choose his stud. If he go wrong it must be by sheer
perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own
ignorant inclinations.
Mr. Smithson was too good a tactician to go wrong in this way. He had
taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his
goods. He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily
as chairs and tables, and he went to the right shop. He employed a
clever Scotchman, an artist in domestic furniture, to plan his house,
and make drawings for the decoration and furniture of every room--and
for six months he gave himself up to the task of furnishing.
Money was spent like water. Painters, decorators, cabinet-makers had a
merry time of it. Royal Academicians were impressed into the service by
large offers, and the final result of Mr. MacWalter's taste and Mr.
Smithson's bullion was a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance,
frescoed ceilings, painted panels, a staircase of sculptured marble, as
beautiful as a dream, a conservatory as exquisite as a jewel casket by
Benvenuto Cellini, a picture gallery which was the admiration of all
London, and of the enlightened foreigner, and of the inquiring American.
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